|
Home::Commentary
The Caveman and the Alien
Author : Sam Vaknin
When Chancellor Kohl's party and Edith Cresson are suspected of gross corruption - these are labelled "aberrations" in an otherwise honest West. When NASA in collaboration with its UK counterpart blow a 130 million US dollars spacecraft to smithereens having confused the metric system for its pound/feet archaic predecessor - people nod their head in disapproval: "accidents happen". When President Clinton appoints his wife to suggest an overhaul of the multi-hundred billion dollars US health system - no one thinks it odd. And when the (talented) son of the police investigated, rumoured to be hyper-corrupt Minister of Interior Affairs of Israel becomes a Minister himself, no one bats an eyelash. Yet, when identical events happen in the decrepit countries of Eastern, Central, or Southern Europe - they are subjected to heaps of excoriating scorn, to vitriolic diatribes, to condescending preaching, or to sanctions. It is, indeed, a double standard, a hypocrisy and a travesty the magnitude of which is rarely to be encountered in the annals of human pretensions to morality.
The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson's edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats - it has driven Europe to the verge of war and the region it "adopted" to the verge of economic and social upheaval.
Enamoured with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly "recommended" measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the phlebeian East with determination rarely equalled by skill or knowledge. Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly deluded, naive, bewildered masses. The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics - but it was the failure that dissuaded them and all else. The West lost Eastern and Southeast Europe not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced - but when it failed. To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clichés, imported models and exported cheap raw materials - the West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to bring ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations. It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only an horizon beclouded and thundering with eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the Euro-Atlantic structures, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core. They are not likely to acquiesce much longer - not with the West's neo-colonialism but with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the non-chalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.
In all this time, the envoys of the West - its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists and its armchair economists - continued to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original. While knowing it all in advance (in breach of every tradition scientific), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the local's immorality and amorality. The jet-set Peeping Toms resided in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist shantytowns, drove utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dined in $100 per meal restaurants ("it's so cheap here'). In between sushi and sake they bemoaned and grieved over corruption and nepotism and cronyism ("I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so..."). They mourned the autochtonal inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (while casting a disdainful glance at the sweaty waiter). To them it looked like an ancient natural phenomenon, a force of nature, an inevitability and hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, they adopted cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believed it lent them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it did is make them obnoxious and more repellent to the residents than they already were.
Ever the preachers, the West - both Europeans and Americans - upheld themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or suprahuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front. Yet the disorder in their own homes was broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they sought to so transform. And they conspired and collaborated in all manner of corruption and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to. In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it - more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West will pay the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn't it a part and parcel of their teaching that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at samvak.tripod.com
Spam emails More free articles Related articles
|
More related feeds |
Horror of the Blood Monsters
Officially, about half of it was swiped from a completely nutso Filipino flick called Tagani -- that's where all the caveman stuff comes from. I also recognized some footage from One Million BC that had already been reused in Robot ...Be Careful Who We Trust?
... evolving aliens and elohim saviours during time of disaster… perhaps you have seen more and more alien stuff and UFO stuff and cavemen stuff and dying planet stuff and stuff subtly and not so subtly against scripture in the media. ... Lyrics
Alien Gobbler Arachnidae The Banana Slug Song Bloodsucking Friends Bubba (the Frog) Dancing with the Insects (Bailando con los Insectos) Earthquake Fire! Food Chain Gang Groty Toes Gusano (I am a Worm) Laws of Physics ... Day 6 IKE Aftermath - Shock of Caveman Whose DOW stock drops 450 pts
It seemed so alien. What is that bright light? Hey, I can actually WASH all the dirty clothes! But it isn't uniform. People I know a few blocks to the west and east in the same area of Kingwood still do NOT have power. ... Acorn Raided - Acorn Conspires To Fix Election
wrote: >SYSTEMIC corruption of our election process continues. Barack Obama and his >old friends at ACORN and Project Vote are leading the way. This radical >revolution is taking place in your backyard. ... Wrting As An Artform - A Performing Art
The plot, the life-issues the main character faces must be (in order for the story to be movie material, not a novel) so basic, so purely human, that a caveman could understand it (no insult). It has to be something viewers grasp ... Alien Alright injects unpredictable twists into classic-rock formula
The layers of fuzz and explosive singing on “Make Some Noise” are definitely in the caveman spirit of Iggy and the Stooges. The best cut, the singalong anthem “Unsigned and Proud,” relishes in its garage-rock stomp with a delirious ... Recommended Books
Randale – The Only Alien on the Planet L650. Ritter – Choosing Up Sides L670. Saint Exupery – The Little Prince L710. Sebestyen, Ouida – Words By Heart â L750. Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn L810. Steinbeck, John – The Red Pony, ... Apollo 14 astronaut claims aliens exist
Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - believes in ET. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up ... Turkish Rip-offs
Interspersed with the familiar scenes are more bizarre sequences, involving a mad scientist (a dead ringer for Alfred Ryder, who played Dr. Crater in “The Man Trap”), as well robots in loincloths, bikini-clad alien girls, ...
|
|
|
